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Unlocking the Narrative

Why interactive media still provide the most exciting opportunities for innovative narrative programming.

The prospect of being liberated from the constraints of linear narratives fills many a traditional media producer with horror. But digital interactive media allow directors to experiment with new ways of telling a story, just as earlier generations experimented with jumpcuts, flashbacks and montages, writes Stephen Jeffery-Poulter.

"The days of commissioning programmes are over, we are now only commissioning projects that have levels of interactivity," BBC new media chief Ashley Highfield announced a few months ago. So it's official, the multi-platform digital future has finally dawned! And not only at the BBC - Channel 4, BSkyB and Flextech are equally keen to attract projects which can work across broadcast and interactive TV, the web, or broadband wireless to your laptop, PDA and mobile phone.

Despite this, many TV and film producers, directors and writers are still adopting the old ‘head in the sand’ approach, apparently secure in the knowledge that recent news about the collapse of the telecoms market and apocalyptic reports on the implosion of the dot com sector mean that these developments can be safely ignored. In the long term this attitude is short-sighted at best and, at worst, professionally suicidal.

I think this myopia stems from two principle misconceptions. First is the fear that their beautifully crafted linear programming is being chopped up indiscriminately into short segments by computer programmers with little appreciation for the televisual arts. Who wants to see their precious work shrunk to the size of a postage stamp and covered with irrelevant graphics and text?

Second, there is a view that anyone working on emerging digital platforms needs an advanced degree in electrical engineering and/or computer programming, and therefore creative talent has no real role to play.

Not so long ago it was fashinonable in web circles to claim that content was king - a claim that all too often proved to be empty. Having spent the last two years attempting to define the characteristics and creative potential of digital programming, however, I remain convinced that we are now seeing the emergence of a new medium with a unique mix of technical capabilities and remarkable creative potential.

This new digital programming will be multi-layered - not only in the sense that text and graphics can be seen synchronously surrounding or overlaying a linear video stream, but the audience will be able to drill down to more related information or relevant content, (including those wonderful out-takes that hit the cutting room floor or precious research material which never made it to the finished item), or alternatively range across into completely new areas of interest.

I suspect that identifiying specific genres in the digital age will become more difficult and less relevant. This has been happening in television for some time with the emergence of drama documentary, factual entertainment, docusoaps, etc. After all, how would you define Big Brother - a fly on the wall documentary? a docusoap? a games show? or just pure voyeurism?

This new programming can be iterative - the tyranny of a fixed time slot no longer need be the limiting factor. Content can be developed and altered either to update time sensitive information or to change the form and range of different elements of material - particularly in response to direct audience feedback.

Of course not only can the contributions by your audience directly input into the editorial process, but the virtual environments in which they do this - noticeboards, e-mails, or chatrooms - actually becomes content too.

The success of the PC gaming industry in creating immersive entertainment will be translated into the development of compelling virtual 3D worlds, where the audience become active participants through avatars characters and can interact with virtual actors programmed with artificial intelligence.

This will only be one of many new ways in which viewers can interact with programming. Not that there is anything new about interactivity - ever since the invention of the moving image the greatest creative challenge has been to get an audience to interact on an emotional level - to make them laugh, cry, be afraid or uplifted.

And audiences have wanted to interact in practical ways too - not only through putting their bums on seats, but by writing and phoning and e-mailing their congratulations and criticisms long before it became fashionable to actively encourage them to do so. Not surprising that a number of very successful TV series have made audience interactivity integral to their format, from the talent show New Faces back in the 1970s to Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? today.

Finally, digital platforms do offer the opportunity to escape from the confines of linear narrative - a prospect which always seems to be greeted with complete panic in traditional media circles. This is ironic, given how many of the greatest cinema directors (Eisenstein and Hitchcock immediately spring to mind) spent their careers devising brilliant ways to break the real time narrative strictures using jumpcuts, montage, flashback and so on.

More recent examples I’d mention include the complex multi-stranded flashback technique used in Amores Perros; the brilliant noir thriller Memento where the entire story is told in reverse; and Mike Figgis’ split-screen approach in Timecode.

The PC Games sector has already done some remarkable pioneering work in developing multi-stranded narratives which apparently offer an infinite range of options but actually use a nodal structure through which players have to pass before they can move on to the next phase of the story.

Hopefully the opportunities outlined above will have already got the creative juices flowing, but exploring that creative potential of digital media requires an active engagement with the relevant software and hardware as well as collaboration with new media agencies and talent.

A version of this article first appeared in Director magazine.